IN PERSON

IN PERSON; Hide Those Children. A Jersey Guy's on TV.

By ROBERT STRAUSS

Published: July 22, 2001

Sometimes New Jersey seems like nothing more than a fertile breeding ground for celebrities, and Chris Wylde intends to interview all of them.

''Well, I don't know about Sinatra,'' Mr. Wylde said. ''His publicist was a real jerk, said he wasn't available.''

With that, Mr. Wylde's giggle goes up the scale. He's on that cusp of potential stardom that causes those almost-comfortable rising giggles in a telephone conversation from Hollywood.

On Aug. 5 at 11:30 p.m., ''The Chris Wylde Show Starring Chris Wylde,'' a 24-year-old who grew up as Chris Noll in Belvedere, Verona and Allendale, will premiere as the first late-night show on the cable network Comedy Central.

At that point, talk-show-host fame -- who is to say how fleeting -- is likely to strike. Or at least this Jersey guy is hoping it will.

''So far, I think, the most famous person out of Northern Highlands Regional High School is Vinnie Testaverde's niece,'' he said, the giggle going up, say, to So or La this time. ''At least Jay Mohr is from Verona. Hope we can get him on the show.''

Mr. Wylde wants as much New Jersey as he can get on his new talkfest. After all, said his older brother, Dave, it will basically be four guys from New Jersey putting on a show. Dave Noll, who lives in Maplewood and is commuting to Los Angeles for now, is the producer. Mr. Wylde's best friend, Brian Walsh, from Middletown, is that talk-show staple, the sidekick. And the Nolls' cousin, Michael Ghegan, who grew up in Maplewood and graduated from Rutgers University, is the leader of Cousin Michael and the Thug All-Stars, the show's house band.

''You are going to see a television revolution, my friend,'' said Mr. Wylde, the giggle going up yet another octave. ''New Jersey is taking over. The kids will shut down the Bastille. We will wake up late-night America. This is the show you will watch before you go out, not before you go to sleep.''

It is such mock-chutzpah that Mr. Wylde thinks is ultimately New Jersey -- and what will ultimately make his show successful.

''Yes, New Jersey is the brunt of America's jokes, but if you are from New Jersey and someone makes a New Jersey joke, you make fun of them right back in their face,'' he said.

After all, Mr. Wylde said, growing up in Verona from the age of 7 through 14 the son of two Methodist ministers in an Italian-American town honed his sense of the come-back put-down.

''Being around all my Italian-American friends, they were ruthless,'' he said. ''Must be inherent. We insulted each other left and right. But we were buddies, too. So it's definitely one-up and in your face, but essentially harmless.''

When he was just Chris Noll at American University in Washington, he, his brother and Mr. Walsh put on a late-night talk show on the college television station, which had a place on local cable access. Mostly it was Chris jabbing at the student council president or basketball point guard, but sometimes a local celebrity like the sportscaster Warner Wolf would drop by.

After college, Dave Noll went to work as a producer for VH-1 and Chris tried to make it as an actor. His big part, Mr. Wylde said, was at the beginning of ''Space Cowboys,'' when Tommy Lee Jones's character -- a trick flier -- has to be introduced, and he goes up for a ride in his plane and throws up all over him.

''It was an attractive performance,'' said Dave, pondering whether he could get Mr. Jones on the new show for a re-enactment.

Through the usual catch-as-catch-can networking lines, Dave Noll discovered that Comedy Central, whose original programming was saved for the prime time hours, was looking to start a young-adult-oriented late-night hour. The brothers culled the tapes of the old college show and, eventually, Comedy Central bought in for a 10-week trial on Sunday nights.

The problem was that there was already an actor named Chris Noll in the Screen Actors Guild. So Chris had to find a new name. He liked Wild Thing, so he asked the secretary at the guild office about that.

''How do you spell it?'' she asked.

So he went wilder than Wild and got Wylde.

''I couldn't do Wilde, because then that would be like Oscar Wilde, and I would demean all of British culture,'' he said.

The repetition of the name in the shows title? ''Another cheap way of getting Chris's name repeated ad nauseum for the college-and-slightly-older audience they seek,'' said his brother Dave.

''David Letterman was and is my influence and my hero,'' Mr. Wylde said. ''In the 1980's, Letterman gave late-night a punch in the arm. But since the 1980's, no one has done it. Greg Kinnear and Conan O Brien? Come on, that s an ex-sportscaster and a guy from Harvard who wears suits, both in their late 30's who just don't listen. Letterman is the only late-night guy who listens to his guests. The others are just into their own jokes. And the young audience can't relate, I don't think, to a guy from Harvard in suits into his own joke.''

His brother Dave, the producer, is particularly amazed that while the networks claim to love the young adult audience, they continue to have older men as hosts in late night.